At this point in the season, we all have different needs when it comes to our fantasy teams, so it’s a good time to open it up for questions to see what topics are on your minds. I went to the Rates & Barrels Discord (here’s a link to join) and received three interesting topics to dive into.
Topic 1: I always personally struggle to sell high because you just get addicted to riding the wave.
For pitchers, here’s how I evaluate whether it’s a good time to “sell high”. It’s easy enough to run a leaderboard of starters with the biggest gap between their current ERA and their projected ERA, using OOPSY. Let’s do that first. On second thought, let’s remove anyone who’s projected for lower than a 3.50 ERA going forward, because it’s not really that great of an idea to sell high on Shohei Ohtani because he might have a 2.99 ERA going forward instead of the 0.82 ERA he has so far.
Sell-high starting pitchers
NameERAppERADiffS+L+P+
1.32
4.30
2.98
98
91
92
1.51
4.17
2.66
99
105
104
2.31
4.78
2.47
89
107
99
2.04
4.15
2.11
91
101
92
1.57
3.63
2.07
106
116
117
2.50
4.48
1.98
86
105
93
4.01
5.97
1.96
80
103
88
2.69
4.64
1.95
98
102
99
2.27
4.19
1.92
89
106
96
I agree with almost all of these as “sell highs”. This speaks to my method for ranking pitchers — look at the projections, look at the underlying metrics that have proven predictive, and anchor the analysis to those. Kyle Harrison aside, these are all middling stuff pitchers, getting by mostly on location, and they have boring-to-harmful rest-of-season outlooks.
What makes it tough is that anyone else can look at these numbers and decide they aren’t buying high on what you’re offering. So you’ll have to find more enticing pitchers if you want to actually coax some value out of what you’re offering. Consider a few of these riskier “sell highs,” if you will:
• Parker Messick has a 2.23 ERA against a projected 3.91 ERA, and Progressive Field plays the most hitter-friendly in June.
• Emerson Hancock (2.78 ERA / 3.94 ppERA) has seen his arm angle drop a further 6-plus degrees, and he’s lost four-plus inches of ride on the fastball.
• Ryan Weathers (3.64 ERA / 4.27 ppERA) has a C health grade and has only topped 100 innings once in his career.
• Ranger Suarez (3.02 ERA / 4.12 ppERA) is sporting the worst Stuff+ and ground-ball rate of his career.
Deciding to sell those players all hurt more, I get it. Most of them feel like real breakouts, young pitchers with a lot of seemingly great career left. But that also means you might actually get something for them, too.
Topic 2: Which teams struggle against starters of only one handedness (i.e., struggle against only lefties or only righties) — something to know when streaming against them?
Again, the easy answer is to go to FanGraphs and look at team splits and see what has happened so far. Here’s how these teams have hit (using wRC+) against lefties and righties so far this season:
• Sure, you expected the Rockies and Padres to be in the bottom five versus lefties, but did you expect the Mariners and Blue Jays also to be there?
• Everyone knows about the Phillies versus lefties (20th), but they’re better than the Orioles and A’s so far against southpaws!
• Watch out for Cleveland against lefties, they’re ninth-best (and the Angels are 12th-best!).
• The Angels suffer against righties (27th), though they are joined by the Red Sox (28th) near the non-Rockies bottom.
• Hey, the Phillies are 25th against righties, maybe that’s their big problem?
• The Reds are fine versus lefties (8th) but have struggled against righties (24th).
• Watch out for the Pirates (fifth) and Mariners (second) against righties!
Anyway, that’s an approach, and it has its merits, but platoon splits in small samples are pretty noisy, and then when you add it up for a whole team, you’re compounding the problem. A better method is to take projected platoon splits by team, which you can do using Steamer projections if you’re a FanGraphs member.
According to those splits, here are the teams that struggle the most against lefties and righties:
• Play your lefty starters against the Rockies, Guardians, Nationals, Marlins, White Sox, Pirates, Rays and Tigers, in that order.
• Play your righty starters against the Rockies, Angels, Marlins, Reds, Rays, White Sox, Nationals and Guardians, in that order.
You can see where the quibbles might be. The Nationals have scored the most runs in baseball, and the White Sox are eighth. You may find that you want to be more conservative and leave some teams off these second lists.
But, at least process-wise, using projections should be the superior way to go about things.
Topic 3: The 20 percent strikeout rate cliff for starters. Historically, how hard is it to be a fantasy-relevant SP (say, a top-75 SP by end of season) while at or below that number?
I took all of the 485 starters with 120 or more innings pitched in a season since 2021 and put them up against their accrued fantasy value in dollars. I used 15-team settings, so if your league is shallower, the findings are probably more stark. But among that group, 142 struck out 20 percent of the batters they saw or fewer.
Among those 142:
• 60 returned positive fantasy value in 15-team leagues (around top-100 among SP)
• 27 produced $5 or more value (around top-75 among SP)
• Five returned at least $10 of value (around top-40 among SP)
• One (Tyler Anderson in 2022) returned $20-plus in value (around top-15 in SP)
I’m a little surprised that around one in three low strikeout starters can return fantasy value, but there are a few caveats.
For one, they’re very unlikely to be top starters. So, as much as Nick Martinez (15 percent strikeout rate), Michael McGreevy (18 percent), Eduardo Rodriguez (18 percent) and Randy Vásquez (18.9 percent) are great stories, they aren’t likely to end up in the top 15, and are almost one-in-30 shots to even be top-40 pitchers when all is said and done this season. Given that Martinez has accrued $15 in value so far this season, it’s far more likely that he’s going to be a negative from here on out than anything else.
The other thing is that repeating this trick is really, really hard. Among the 60 positive value low-K seasons in the past five years:
• Only one player (Anderson) has done it three times, and he was worth $5 combined over the five-season sample.
• Anderson had a $21 season, a $4 season, a 75-cent season and two double-digit negative dollar seasons.
• Only 13 players managed the feat twice, led by Jameson Taillon and José Berríos in talent.
So the general rule of thumb is rent, don’t buy. Low strikeout starters can be found money, where about one in three who are actually given full volume have figured something out and can be a positive. But they are a one-in-30 bet to have real fantasy relevance, and a one-in-142 bet to be a top starter. Once they do it, they’re about a one-in-four shot to do it again (though not necessarily the next year).
It’s a real shelf. Strikeouts matter.